Furnace

by Wayne Price

  In his office he throws a Ziploc bag bulging with grass onto the desk. Fresh from my brother in Jalapa, he announces, and slides it open. This, mijo, was raised from original Acapulco Gold stock, he tells me. Acapulco fucking Gold, man – the legend. He takes a long, deep whiff before digging into it. The heat’s even more stifling in the little back office. I’m sweating bad. I can feel it soaking my vest and shorts but Jesus in his usual black jacket and white shirt and skinny black tie looks dry and cool. He pauses from loading the papers and smoothes both hands over his long grey hair, tightening the knot of his pony-tail.

  Heat like this makes the hit more intense, he tells me. Heat like this, it thickens up the fluids that carry the high; the delivery system. He licks along the double length of the joint, then scoots his chair back, swings his fancy boots up onto the desk and crosses them at the ankle. For a sixty year old hippy he looks pretty sharp, like a gambler in a Western, or a marshal. That’s why it’s always best to smoke in a hot climate, he goes on, wagging his Zippo at me. He lights up, takes a long deep draw and holds it a good while before releasing. It’s more natural, he sighs out with the smoke. That’s why God made yerba grow best in hot places.

  Back through in the store the bell rings. We stop to listen and the door rattles hard.

  Leave it, he says, but waits a few seconds, listening, before handing me the spliff and carrying on talking. You Scottish got beer. God gave you a cold wet high for a cold wet place, right? Children of the sun got yerba. I got Zapotec blood, mijo. The papery skin around his eyes creases up and he laughs without making a sound.

  I cough a bit and nod.

  He takes it back from me. Man, you disgust me, he says. You’re sweating out your fucking lips!

  By the time I get out onto the street the high’s hitting like a hammer and the sun makes it worse. A truck horn blares right next to me and I realise I’m veering off the sidewalk. A cop perched on a mountain bike stares at me from across the street but then pushes off into the traffic. I decide to take a walk down to the rowing club boat sheds. A couple of times I had luck there the summer I arrived. Apart from twinking at the pool, it was the first beat I found.

  At the top of Main Street I cut towards the woodland walk which runs from the back end of the campus all the way to the riverside. Even though it’s July a few students are still around and using the path – the usual jocks in training, drumming up dust when they pound past, an Asian couple walking ahead of me, carrying library books. I overtake them just as we pass the married students’ quarters and they veer off to the big concrete building in the trees. I can hear small kids playing in the woods nearby, but they’re nowhere to be seen.

  At the river I sit on the lawn in front of the boat sheds, watching a family cooking at one of the communal barbeque grills. The smell of it comes over strong to me and after not wanting food all day I’m suddenly weak and shaky from hunger. The painted notice on the boat shed says DON’T SWIM. I close my eyes for a while and try to centre myself, but the bright red letters of the notice stay there behind the lids and I have to open them again to wipe out the image. Though the sun’s beginning to dip towards the treetops on the far bank, the heat’s still fierce. Just a few kids are paddling at first but then a young guy about the same age as me, in shorts and a university vest, wades out and takes a stand thigh-deep in the water. There’s something familiar about him but I can’t think what. He stares across the river, and lifts one arm to shield his eyes. The vest rides up under his raised arm and I see a big, flat pink scar the shape of a smile. Some kind of burn. It runs from just above his left hip to the middle ribs. Then I realise where I’ve seen him before – lifeguarding at the public pool. He drops his arm and turns to look my way. He doesn’t make any sign but I can feel my luck building. The kids in the river are noisy and splashing around but the lifeguard’s far enough away not to be bothered by them. I get up, kick off my sandals and step in.

  The water’s warm and cloudy. I stay close to the shed and watch him out the corner of my eye. He’s ready to come over to me I can tell, but now the shallows start filling with other waders. Soon I have to back away from some old, grinning bald guy with his lapping Alsatian. All around my knees the water’s covered in spent gnats, all spread-eagled in the surface film. Once I notice them I realise they’re plastering the whole backwater, great spreads of them like a broken skin.

  Then, maybe because of the grass still working on me, or the dazzle of the sun, or all the clouds of mud being stirred by everyone, I could swear there are things in the water, living things, Christ knows what, sliding round my legs and feet. My heart starts kicking like a horse. With all the mud stirred up it’s impossible to see what’s down there in the soup. I look up and fix my eyes on an empty spot in mid-stream, trying to calm my brain. The river’s flat as a strip of tin. It’s so wide and slow-moving there’s no way of telling which way it’s flowing. There’s no way of knowing if it’s going anywhere at all. I try to think about how long it would take to be carried all the way to the ocean, and then I get a thought about that big river in India where they put their dead, but the name won’t come and all I can think is why do they do that? Then the sliding feeling comes again around my legs, like fingers, and a cold sweat breaks all across my back. I lift each leg, one after the other, nearly falling right over, a few broken fly bodies sticking to the hairs. I know I have to get out of there. I splash back to the bank faster than I mean to and drop onto the lawn. A fat guy lounging nearby says, sharks, buddy? but I don’t pay him any mind. I strap my sandals back on and watch the lifeguard again. My whole body’s shaking.

  Hey, Francis, some guy calls from just behind me, and the lifeguard lifts a hand to greet him. Behind him, flashing off the water, the big low sun is blinding. I don’t turn to see who’s calling him. Francis, I say to no-one.

  The next morning I call Jesus early and tell him I’m sick.

  You lying son of a bitch, he says, still sleepy. What kind of sick?

  Don’t know. Could be the heat.

  Could be the heat? Listen you lazy motherfucker, he says, it’s Saturday morning. I need you there. If you’re not there behind that fucking counter when I come by at ten, don’t bother coming back.

  In the background I can hear a woman’s voice and a baby crying. He says something in Spanish away from the mouthpiece.

  Okay. Well, so long then. What about the keys? I say.

  Mail them through the door, you lazy fucking gringo. He puts the phone down.

  I’m waiting outside the pool when it opens at seven. Already it’s hot enough for the girl in the booth to have a little electric fan going. She doesn’t smile when she hands me my rubber bracelet.

  This early, the pool’s almost empty. I watch a gang of old folks, three men and four women, lower themselves carefully in and launch out on their morning exercise of a few slow, calm lengths. It’s restful to watch them. The water looks very blue, like the sea in a postcard, but I know that’s just how the concrete under the water is painted. There’s no sign of Francis. Another lifeguard – a round, red-headed girl – jogs out from the changing rooms and climbs the platform. She keeps a close eye on the old swimmers, frowning thoughtfully at them. The air stinks of chlorine. I rub in a handful of sun cream, cover my face with a fold of towel, then lie back and doze.

  There’s noise all around me when I wake and I realise I must have slept for hours. The sun’s already high and even before I move a muscle I know I’ve been burned through the sun cream. I sit up painfully, my stomach scorched. Behind me a young girl is talking. Just say yes or no, she says.

  But I don’t know. I don’t know if I do or don’t.

  Well yes or no? I have to fill in something.

  I still don’t know.

  If I don’t fill in anything it won’t work. There’s no box for ‘don’t know’.

  Well that’s lame.

  I twist onto my stomach so I can see them: two pretty little mall rats in shorts and crop-tops. One of them, a
skinny blond with bobbed hair, is hunched over some teen magazine, her pen hovering over a page. Her Latino friend, plainer and dumpier, is propped back on her elbows, frowning over her shades. They don’t notice me at all.

  The blond girl sighs. When we add up the numbers it’s all going to be wrong. We might as well not have started.

  It’s only one question.

  But it throws the whole thing out.

  I guess. The Latino struggles to sit upright. She plucks at her crop-top and then lies right back. Just put down no, she says, talking to the flat blue sky.

  Can’t you decide for real, though?

  Okay, put down yes, she says.

  The blond winces and taps her pen against her straight white teeth. I’ll put down no, she says after a while. If you don’t know, I think that’s more accurate. She marks the page, then stares all about her.

  A whistle blows and I squirm round to sit upright again. It’s Francis. He’s on the opposite side of the pool, jabbing a finger at two boys horsing around at the pool’s edge. No you don’t, he mouths; no-you-don’t. The boys trot away from the water, grinning.

  I don’t know, the blond girl says behind me. It’s too hot to think about stuff anyway.

  Add up the scores, though, her friend tells her, her voice weird and hollow-sounding suddenly, like she’s talking in a deep sleep.

  The other girl groans.

  If you don’t add them up there’s no point.

  I watch Francis making his way slowly round the pool’s perimeter. The old folks are long gone and all the lanes are crowded with random, splashing bodies. Just about every step he takes, pool water slops over his feet. Everything’s glittering.

  A tall, black-haired woman pads towards me, dripping from her swim. She catches my eye and hitches up her soaked costume. She passes close by and I hear her flap out a towel next to the two girls.

  Having fun? she says.

  Sure, the blond girl replies. It’s too hot though.

  I hear one of them rummaging in a bag and then the gasp of a ring-pull being peeled back.

  You still doing that questionnaire?

  Uh huh. The adding up part now. It gives you a score.

  Is it about boyfriends?

  No. It’s about ‘Are you ruled by fate?’

  So what’s the difference? she teases.

  Oh mom, the Latino drones, her voice still dead as a stone.

  Francis is close now, passing right in front of us. As I stand he turns and gives me a puzzled look, then a quick smile of recognition. Hey, he says quietly, and carries on walking. I dive as well as I can, ball up underwater and watch all my silver breath pour out of me. When I surface, he’s watching. I fall away into a back-stroke.

  I swim till I’m tired out, then drag myself up one of the chrome ladders and head for my towel. I’ve lost sight of Francis but the girls and the woman are still there. All three of them are shading their eyes and peering up at the sky.

  I lie back, stretching myself flat out, every muscle weak and trembling, and realise they’re watching a micro-glider circling high up above the town. Soon it wheels into the sun and I lose it in the glare.

  He’s just going round and round in a circle, the blond girl complains.

  It’s just like a big paper airplane, says the mother.

  Why doesn’t he just come down? the dark girl says, but nobody answers.

  I can hear my breathing, like the air’s scraping the walls of my chest. Tiny and high, the glider swings out of the sun again.

  Hey, says the blond, what if he had, like, explosives tied to him and was looking for something to fly into?

  Hush. That’s not funny, sweetheart, the Latino’s mother replies.

  Well Pastor Parks, he said Arabs could buy nuclear bombs now which would be small enough so you could like carry them in a baby buggy, and it would be totally worse than 9-11.

  Yeah, the Latino girl broke in, like it was a baby. To fool people and get into places.

  What’s there to blow up here? the mother says, and stares up again at the tiny circling figure in the sky, shading her eyes. Anyway, how about we think about something a little happier now?

  But that weirdo up there, he could carry something like that in his arms, the blond girl insists.

  But how would he steer? the Latino says.

  Maybe that’s why he’s going round in circles, the mother says tartly, and the blond girl giggles.

  At closing time, Francis stays behind on trash duty. I leave, circle the block, then he lets me back in. He takes me to the walk-in store cupboard, snaps the light on and locks the door. I sit myself on a wholesale carton of Clorox and peel off his damp trunks. You’d better put this on, I say.

  Wait, he says, and everything stops except the blood knocking in my head. You just being cute, or pos?

  Pos, I say.

  Shit! he whispers. Any second I expect him to pull away, but he doesn’t. He stands there, not moving a muscle. I can smell the chlorine trapped in the flat coils of his hairs. Okay, he says in a tight voice. Put it on. Then he says something else I don’t catch, and I can’t say anything.

  The next day he skips work and we get drunk in his apartment watching re-runs of Bonanza. He tells me he’s starting a PhD in philosophy and looking at the stacks of heavyweight books all around the apartment, I believe him.

  How’d you get that scar? I ask him, in between episodes.

  He laughs and shakes his head.

  I’d like to know more philosophy, I tell him.

  He laughs again. There’s philosophy and there’s philosophy, he says.

  We avoid the other subject for most of the day but in the end he says: so how long has it been?

  I tell him I found out last fall.

  What you taking?

  Can’t get anything, I say. I’m not supposed to be here.

  He snorts. So go home. Get treatment there.

  I like it better here, I say. This is home now. Anyway, I feel fine.

  Christ, he says, and goes to the fridge for more beer. When he comes back to the couch he’s shaking his head. He hands me a tin, then moves away to sit in the armchair opposite. You don’t feel anything yet?

  I don’t know. I get pretty tired some days. But I think I always did. It’s hard to tell.

  It could be years before it shows.

  That’s what they said.

  Hm, he says, and chews his lip. Well, man, any of us could go any time. None of us knows when, I guess.

  That’s right. That’s my kind of philosophy, I say.

  You should go back, though, he says, still serious. You’re fucking crazy not to go back. You can get retros and all that shit for free in the UK, right?

  If I start to feel it I’ll go back.

  You should go before the winter comes in. Once you get sick you’ll need looking after and shit. He narrows his eyes, like he’s examining me. You can’t get help around here, he says, then sighs. I don’t want to talk about it, he says.

  Me neither.

  He squints at me again and runs a hand over his hair. Listen – no more fun, okay? It’s freaking me out. He opens his beer and takes a few long, loud gulps.

  Okay, I say, but later he asks for it anyway, so long as I’m careful.

  By Wednesday I’ve got my job back at the record store. The first few times I call, Jesus puts the phone down, but in the end he lets me speak and ends up taking me back with another pay cut. Listen, he says. I’m hanging my dick out giving you work without a card. No more games. You got that?

  Okay, I say.

  Okay. See you at ten, he says. He sounds tired.

  That Friday the weather breaks at last and turns to rain. Jesus pays me part cash, part Quaaludes just arrived from Jalapa. You know, he says, no-one up here even knows about these babies any more. No-one even knows their name. It’s a tragedy, mijo. Me, I’m old school. He rattles them in their canister. Like a slow ride down the river, man. Padrisimo. He tells me there’s a storm blowing in, coming
up from Virginia.

  I take the Quaaludes round to Francis’s place. He’s heard of them, he says, but never tried them. You shouldn’t be taking this shit, he says, but we drop a couple each with beer and settle down for the evening. It’s peaceful in his little apartment with the piles of deep, meaningful books everywhere, the smell of fried chicken from some other apartment and the sound of the rain beating down outside. It’s early twilight and looking at the grey window I wonder if we’ll spend the fall like this. The thought makes me feel kind of sleepy and comfortable.

  I need to study for the next few days, Francis says suddenly. I need to catch up. I’m meeting with somebody from the faculty next week to see if they’ll enrol me.

  Cool, I say. I kick off my shoes and set my bare feet up on the couch.

  Listen, Robbie, he says, but then just shakes his head and goes on reading his book.

  For a while I sit staring at the window, watching the rain tap and run on the glass and the dark filling in the sky behind it. The sunburned skin on my stomach is itching so I peel off a few dead strips and roll them into scrolls.

  Don’t do that, Francis snaps, seeing me drop some of it onto the floor.

  There’s a wind getting up outside. I can hear it in the scrub oaks. Earlier in the evening, while I was waiting for Francis to get home and let me in to the apartment block, I saw two black squirrels chasing each other under the trees. They were smaller than the usual grey kind. I never even knew squirrels could be black, but there they were, chasing around. Maybe the change in the weather made them nervous. I look at Francis in his chair, reading. Every now and then he underlines something or scribbles in a notebook.

  Don’t watch me, he says. Watch TV or something.

  It won’t bother you?

  No, he says. Then he tilts his head and rolls it from side to side on the back of the chair. Those ludes, he says, they’re taking hold of me now. He blinks hard and stares up at the ceiling, showing the whites of his eyes. I can’t stop reading the same fucking sentence, he says. I finish it, and then it’s there again, where the next one ought to be. He looks back down at his book and laughs kind of miserably to himself.